So, a new therapy for autisic children. Good thing, yes?
What’s exciting about the findings of this study is that the therapy does successfully boost the social development of the children who receive it.
...
What makes this complicated, however, is that social communication skills are one of the main things measured when someone is assessed for an autism diagnosis. The fact that this therapy boosted those skills meant that children scored lower on those parts of autism assessments, which in turn meant they didn’t meet the criteria for an autism diagnosis. In fact, the study shows that this therapy reduced autism diagnosis by two-thirds.
Or, another way to look at this, 'these children are no longer held back by their affliction'. Why would that not be a positive thing?
The main concern for us in the UK is that support only follows diagnosis. Even if the therapy allows autistic people to have a better start in life, the system will need to change to ensure support is there if and when it is needed.
Ah. As always, follow the money. And the activist's hopes of a guaranteed milk herd...
We also have to ask what else a child may miss out on if they go on to be diagnosed with autism at a later date. For many autistic people, autism is part of their identity.
This is beginning to sound a lot like those wretched 'deaf culture' proclaimers, isn't it?
Medical research studies such as this, for all their methodological rigour, do rub uncomfortably against the experience of being autistic. Autism is not a “preventable” condition that we can treat like other areas of medical research.
How fortunate for you, then, to have a 'cause' that will never be met..?
5 comments:
Autism has always been a barrier to those afflicted by it and those around them. Then someone invented "autism spectrum disorder" to widen the goalmouth and the money rolled in.
When I was at school in the 1950s, there was no autism, but there were some slow/thick kids and those with behavioural issues. Both were robustly addressed by the primary school teachers - the thick kids learnt as much as they could, the badly behaved soon started to behave better.
The popularity of 'autism' diagnosis says far more about the quality of parenting than it does about any medical condition the kids may, but almost certainly don't, have.
Ah, so once you are on the spectrum you must never be allowed to move off it. Even though there are therapies such as this one and at least one natural process (kids getting older) which means some proportion of them move off it.
"Then someone invented "autism spectrum disorder" to widen the goalmouth and the money rolled in."
I never cease to be astonished at the growth industry in victimhood, and how even normal human variation is tortured to fit it...
"The popularity of 'autism' diagnosis says far more about the quality of parenting than it does about any medical condition..."
Spot on! But then, it does seem to unlock the benefits, doesn't it?
"Even though there are therapies such as this one and at least one natural process (kids getting older) which means some proportion of them move off it."
The farmer doesn't allow his sheep to stray, or else how can he shear them, and apply to grants?
“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”
- Booker T. Washington
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